Mendele: Yiddish literature and language
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Contents of Vol. 6.149
December 19, 1996

1) Introduction (Moyshe Hurvits)
2) Introduction (Chava Ermentrout)
3) Yiddish in pre-expulsion England (Hugh Denman)
4) Rebecca Gratz and Yiddish (Kalman Weiser)
5) A Slavonic component? (Zellig Bach)
6) Slavic component of Yiddish and 'fusion' language (Ellen Prince)

1)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 18 Dec 1996 09:20:19 -0500
From: 105365.500@compuserve.com
Subject: Introduction

Ikh bin a mendelyaner k'mat a yor tsayt.  Ikh arbet far an organizatsie
vos shtitst dos idishe lebn in Rusland, Ukrayne, un Byelorus.  Eyn zakh
vos hot a bazundern interes far mendelyaner iz di role fun idish inem
idishn lebn in yene lender.  Farn altn dor, shpilt idish zeyer a
vikhtike role, spetsiel yidishe lider un muzik.

In etlekhe naye kehile-grupes, hobn mentshn geshafn a khor oder a
lider-gruppe (lmoshl, in Vinnitsa iz faran a gruppe "Momene Lider" vos
zamelt un zingt idishe folks lider; in Khmelnik,iz do a gants lebidik
khor; in Peterburg, bei dem pensionern-klub "Eva" iz oikhet faran a
khor.  In etlekhe idishe "zuntik-shuln" lernt men di kinder idish.

Oyb es zenen do mendelyaner vos hobn an interes in dem inyen, bin ikh
greyt tsu entfern af ale frages.

Moyshe Hurvits (Martin Horwitz)

2)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 19 Dec 1996 00:15:23 -0400
From: cermentrout@infoave.net
Subject: Introduction

I'm a student (and sometimes teacher, in the first 2) of Spanish,
French, German, Dutch, Italian, (etc.) and am beginning with Hebrew and
Yiddish.  I love Klezmer music as well as Celtic, Beatles, Salsa, French
rock, Tejano, etc.

I love to read real literature(s) in the original(s) but ... zo file
bikher, zo veynik tsayt! :-(

Chava Ermentrout

3)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 18 Dec 1996 18:08:52 +0100 (MET)
From: h_denman@maier.vol.at
Subject: Yiddish in pre-expulsion England

I don't know the answer to this question [6,144. 6] and I don't think
anybody does really. However, I have thought about the issue and as one
of the few British Mendelyaner feel somewhat called upon to comment.

What we can say with some certainly is that at that time there were very
close contacts between the Jews of France and those of the Rhineland.
After all, Rashi (1040-1105) is known to have studied at the great
academies of Mainz and Worms, before returning to his native Troyes and
his commentaries contain at least 24 Yiddish glosses. Until recently it
was accepted wisdom to assume that these glosses are the result of
subsequent additions and emendations to the text. But recent work
conducted at the University of Trier has shown that these glosses are
indeed the work of Rashi himself and cannot therefore be any later than
1105 and are more likely to have been written several decades earlier,
that is to say before the end of the eleventh century. Indeed, it would
seem that there was considerable traffic between the communities of
Northern France and those of the southern Germany which had come into
existence around the turn of the millennium. Consequently, although this
unfortunately cannot be confirmed from documentary sources, it not
unlikely that there were Yiddish speakers among the Jews who are known
to have accompanied William I to Winchester and London.

Hugh Denman
London

4)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 19 Dec 1996 10:56:31 -0500 (EST)
From: kiw2@columbia.edu
Subject: Rebecca Gratz and Yiddish

In letstn numer Mendele (vol. 6.146) hot men gefregt, tsi Rebecca Gratz
hot gekent yidish.  Af ot der frage ken ikh nisht entfern, ober mir
veysn az ir foter iz yo geven a reder fun mayrev-yidish.  Der filolog
Joshua Neumann hot opgedrukt mit iberzetsungen un shprakhlekhn analiz 11
briv tsu oder fun di barimte filadelfyer sokhrim Gratz (yekhiel un beyr
= Michael and Bernard) in kolonialer amerike.  Di briv ken me gefinen in
Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society (1937).

Kalman Weiser

5)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 18 Dec 1996 12:57:56 -0500
From: zellig@aol.com
Subject: A Slavonic component?

In his polemical post in 6.145,1, with reference to my post "Do iz nito
in nishto," Jota Piasecki questions several times, in an authoritative
tone, what is the source for my assertion that the three main
componental language determinants of Yiddish are German, Hebrew-Aramaic,
and Slavic;  he even questions the latter designation for the group of
languages and believes that it should be "slavonic."

Well, my authority for both is the eminent historian of the Yiddish
language Max Weinreich (1894 - 1969).  See his four-volume _Geshikhte
fun der Yidisher Shprakh_(Yivo, 1973).  Also, the English translation of
the first two Yiddish volumes _History of the Yiddish Language_ (Yivo
and the University of Chicago Press, 1973).

Zellig Bach
Lakehurst, NJ

6)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 18 Dec 1996 21:06:33 EST
From: ellen@central.cis.upenn.edu
Subject: Slavic component of Yiddish and 'fusion' language

both tsugaya sasaki and zachary baker allude (6.147) to claims of slavic
influence on yiddish syntax. this is a topic i have spent the last ten
years investigating and i have not yet found anything in yiddish syntax
that could be construed as slavic, at least not by what theoretical
syntacticians mean by 'syntax'. so far, everything i have seen at the
level of syntax looks profoundly germanic, tho there is of course a
great deal of slavic influence on the lexicon (lots of slavic words
borrowed into yiddish) and in the semantics and pragmatics (lots of
slavic-origin meanings expressed by germanic syntactic forms). if anyone
knows of something *syntactic* that is from slavic in yiddish that i
might have missed, i'd be very grateful if they could point it out to
me.

similarly, zachary baker mentions max weinreich's claim that yiddish is
a 'fusion' language. i must point out that this claim is *at best*
controversial. first, there is no reason i know of to consider yiddish
anything but a germanic language. second, there is no substantive
definition i know of of 'fusion' language. true enough, yiddish shows a
lot of influence from languages with which it was in contact (semitic
and slavic primarily) -- but that doesn't make it stop being a germanic
language. english in fact shows *much more* influence of contact
languages than yiddish does but it still ranks as a full-fledged
germanic language by any conventional criterion! again, i'd be very
grateful to learn about anything relevant that i might have missed.

thanks.

ellen prince

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End of Mendele Vol. 6.149